Archive for 2012

This house, too, lies in the vineyard with a wonderful view of the Moselle. It is in part a masonry building with a visibly screwed oak façade; in part it has a load-bearing timber and glass façade. The building encloses an internal courtyard on three sides and is oriented to the northeast, towards the Moselle. There, too, a large pool of water was positioned, which can also be used as a swimming pool. A footbridge leads across this pool to the entrance to the house.

Now that preservation is increasingly important in our approach to existing cities, the period between the 1960s and 1980s is, worldwide, an exception. We can imagine saving Fin de Siècle, early Modernism, but the more anonymous and impersonal architecture that emerged after World War II has few fans and almost no defenders. That is why we were very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of Vremena Goda into the new house for Garage. We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the Soviet wreckage and fi nd new uses and interpretations for them; it also enabled us to avoid the exaggeration of standards and scale that is becoming an aspect of contemporary art spaces. – Rem Koolhaas

Bow Quarters is a beautiful seven-acre Grade-II listed residential development set within a historic site of the con­verted Bryant and May matchbox factory. The site is separated from the Olympic Park by the Blackwall Tunnel. Studio Verve was shortlisted and invited to provide design proposals for the conversion of one of the mezzanine apart­ments into a two-bedroom flat.

Completed in 2005, the office façade of the new Hyundai Development Company headquarters was designed to integrate the headquarters with the public plaza, the below-grade spaces and any future development on the site. A 62 meter ring dominates the main facade together with a complementary vector that explores the depth of the facade as a space that will be locally accessible through volume and plane projections.

Mar Azul is a seaside resort on the coast of Buenos Aires, located 12 miles south of Villa Gesell, with an extensive beach of dunes and lush virgin forest of conifers. The owners, members of the study and connoisseurs for years in this place chose precisely the splendid scenery of the forest to build a small summer house.

The rich culture of Turkey includes a monument to human achievement, invention, and practicality – a site called Cappadocia. More than two thousand years ago, the people of the region sought a strong, permanent and imposing shelter. Inspired by the natural geological formations in the region which withstood all natural onslaughts, the people carved and “engineered” homes and public spaces within those natural rock formations. They did this with such skill and esthetics that it still echoes today with vibrancy and life.

Re-Imagining Seward Park Redevelopment (SPURA) on the Lower East Side, New York

Recent news coverage for the 7-acre parcel, Manhattan’s biggest undeveloped, publicly owned development site south of 96th Street, has provided the chance to contemplate many important urban issues.

Firstly, are we taking full advantage of this great opportunity to develop a vast land in the heart of Manhattan, or just limiting our imagination under current NYC zoning resolution (which is 50 years old)? Secondly, is the hot debate over big box retailers heading to the right direction?

In 2009 Head of Roads Department of Georgia commissioned J. MAYER H. to design a system of Rest Stops for the new highway, which will run through Georgia and connect the Republic of Azerbaijan with the Republic of Turkey. Two Rest Stops have been completed while this third one is under construction.

In order to avoid the bilboquet form inherent to most observation structures of this height, the proposed building is conceived as a continuous segment whose middle part is made thicker by a knot. The resulting symbolic shape expresses the idea that the total length of the tower is in fact even longer than the regulated maximum height of 450 meters which it reaches at its summit. Alternately, the space created by the knot shape turns out to conveniently provide viewers with a three-dimensional panoramic experience of the city of Incheon, as a continuous indoor and outdoor balcony.

Thinking of change as a liberating architectural opportunity rather than a limitation led to the original design of the SOS Lavezzorio Community Center. As the central hub of SOS Children’s Village Chicago, an organization in Chicago’s Auburn-Gresham neighborhood that serves foster care families, the building combines services for foster care and neighborhood families under one roof.